Amazon EC2 vs Google Compute Engine comparison

The compared Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google solutions aren't in the same category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #6 in CS , with an average rating of 9.1, and holds a 5.4% mindshare in the category. Google is ranked #10 in ISI , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Google users who would recommend it.

Amazon EC2

Read 67 Amazon EC2 reviews

966 Views
502 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Google Compute Engine

Read 16 Google Compute Engine reviews

437 Views
220 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Amazon EC2

Google Compute Engine

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon EC2 and Google Compute Engine based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Apache, Zadara and others in Compute Service.

To learn more, read our detailed Compute Service Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Compute Service

June 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 856,873 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EC2

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Compute Service (6th)

Google Compute Engine

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (10th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Cloud Services solutions, they serve different purposes. Amazon EC2 is designed for Compute Service and holds a mindshare of 5.4%, down 7.5% compared to last year.
Google Compute Engine, on the other hand, focuses on Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS), holds 0.8% mindshare, up 0.2% since last year.

Compute Service

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

Featured Reviews

KatlegoMabila

Senior AWS Account Manager at Silicon Overdrive

Offers customization and flexibility with great support

Scalability depends on whether the client wants to scale up or scale down. It decreases resources based on demand. The great aspect of scalability is the flexibility to allow business success to optimize resource solutions and cost efficiency. Another crucial aspect of scalability is auto-scaling. When you have the opportunity to auto-scale, it can't always be available for everything. If you have chosen to integrate with auto-scaling, it's marvellous and doesn't require additional effort. Auto-scaling gives you the edge by using the capacity you have efficiently, scaling up or down as needed. These flexibilities within the EC2 feature instances of AWS play a crucial role in helping me utilize AWS EC2 Intelligent efficiently.

Read full review

WahyuKurniawan

Head of Software Engineering at Abarobotics.com

Reasonably priced and offers high availability features

The synchronization between two tools, meaning if I have another server outside Google Cloud, as far as I know, I cannot mimic the server in Google Cloud to another server outside Google Cloud. I don't know if Google has the above-mentioned features or not, and if it does have them, then maybe Google can help us set things right and how to make a server mimic either of the servers outside Google. With the hot swap features or if Google Cloud itself is down, we can replace the services with another server. Right now, I have another server outside Google as a backup of a production server. There should be synchronization between servers inside Google and those outside it. The high availability features in Google are only available in Google Compute Engine in different regions. If I have another server outside Google, the high availability features in Google cannot synchronize with such a server.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The most valuable features of Amazon EC2 are ease of use and the services offered."

"EC2 provides a lot of flexibility. If you don't want to have a separate on-premise database, you can put it on the cloud with EC2. You can adjust the instance type according to your needs. You select a size and get a certain amount of specific memory, CPUs, etc. You set the redirect limit, and from there, you install the software, database servers, application servers, and whatever you want."

"The scalability and elasticity are helpful."

"I can quickly create a VM instance with just one click."

"The solution offers good access policies."

"The product is easy to set up."

"What we have found most valuable is that we have not lost stability in the program."

"EC2 has the typical advantages of using the cloud. It's easy to provision and set up."

More Amazon EC2 pros

"The initial setup is reasonably straightforward. It's a handful of networks and a handful of computers."

"It's the most engineer-friendly product compared to Amazon AWS or Azure."

"I recommend the tool to others since it has high availability features, scalability, and stability."

"The solution helps to direct SSH into the machine at the click of a button. It also helps to deploy container images right from the UI. There is no need to manage the containers on the machine. I also like the tool’s Spot provision model."

"The overall product rating is nine out of ten."

"One of GCE's best features is the managed instance groups."

"The most valuable feature is auto-scaling."

"From a feature perspective, I find API integration, automation capabilities, and features like preemptive and Spot instances valuable. Migration tools have also been useful."

More Google Compute Engine pros

Cons

"Regional acceleration could improve. If I am hosting a website and I want the experience to be faster they should have this feature to allow for increased speeds."

"Accessibility must be improved."

"Nothing is really missing in terms of features."

"They can build automatic features for ENSS or network drive. They have the Control-M feature. Similarly, they should have a feature for the network drive that can be mapped. I have not seen such a feature. They have a lot of products but those are quite costly. There is no cheaper option available for the EC2 instance for syncing two drives. If these features are available, it would be good."

"Technical itself could be a bit more helpful, especially when it comes to integration assistance. When we talk to the technical team, often it's some issue with integration and they'll tell us to talk to the other company. Often, the other company will look at everything and not see an issue from their end and then we are at an impasse."

"Amazon EC2 could improve its dashboards and UI, they need to be more user-friendly."

"One of the challenges is the AMI upgrades."

"They should fix the key pair name functionality and provide the ability to assign multiple key pair names to an EC2 instance. It is a key pair feature, and it provides you the ability to actually log into the server. It is basically like a password. In terms of new features, it should have the ability to increase and decrease the instance size based on certain times of the day. We should be able to do this without turning off the EC2 instance. Currently, you have to turn it off and then turn it back on. It should also have HTTPS or SSL integration."

More Amazon EC2 cons

"The licensing process is not a very straightforward process."

"Google Compute Engine needs to have multi-region support. It would also be nice to have a tracking mechanism."

"Google has a lack of focus on their products."

"It has some limitations. For example, you don't get through layer two connectivity. So I've had some difficulty deploying custom VMs. For example, you can't deploy a KVM file to file directly on GCP."

"The high availability features in Google are only available in Google Compute Engine in different regions. If I have another server outside Google, the high availability features in Google cannot synchronize with such a server."

"I would like to improve the solution’s UI while deploying a container. It is sometimes hard to figure out the container’s details and format that you want to deploy. The tool does not give you a guide to find out the error and why the container is not starting up which could be because you have configured it wrong. This is always a hit on the setup."

"It is not very user-friendly for non-experienced users"

"Sometimes support takes time to reply."

More Google Compute Engine cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When we did the deployment of Amazon EC2 we found it to be less expensive than other solutions."

"The solution has different pricing models, and its cost differs when you purchase it for one year or three years."

"The use of Amazon EC2 does not incur any licensing fees."

"It's competitive but can vary based on instance types and usage patterns."

"The licensing of Amazon EC2 is expensive. Microsoft Windows Servers are expensive to license."

"I use the free tier, although I have paid for some services that are not free. The overall cost of this solution depends on the services you use."

"The price of Amazon EC2 could improve. The Google Cloud Platform is more cost-effective."

More Amazon EC2 pricing and cost advice

"Google Compute Engine is not the least expensive solution. Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft One, are offering a less expensive solution. The price is based on usage. Whenever we use it, we have to pay for only usage. It is a pay-as-you-go model."

"Google Compute Engine's pricing is flexible and the best of all other alternatives."

"It's $60,000 to $70,000 a month to replace about $10,000 a month in data center costs."

"The tool is reasonably priced, considering its scalability features. If we want to extend the server's capacity, we can do it, and I think it's reasonable."

"I rate GCE's pricing a five out of ten since it's affordable."

"In terms of improvement, one is definitely the licensing piece. So there is a feature, the BYOL (Bring Your Own License) licensing piece, to bring your own license. It is not that straightforward. It requires some support from Google to get it sorted, access those licenses, and configure those licenses."

"Google is providing money for learning Google Compute Engine. They offer a $300 free trial to new customers. Any beginner can easily get started."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Compute Service solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

23%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

25%

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EC2?

The scalability and elasticity are helpful.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EC2?

Amazon EC2 is a bit expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon EC2?

The main thing that needs improvement is the cost. Other than that, there is nothing that needs improvement.

See all answers

What do you like most about Google Compute Engine?

Everything is simple and useful. The initial setup is not challenging.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Compute Engine?

Google resources are cheaper compared to AWS and Microsoft Azure. Among the three, Google is the cheapest option.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Google Compute Engine?

Google has a lack of focus on their products. They have many products in various areas of the market, but they do not productize or appeal to the market effectively. They should concentrate on prod...

See all answers

Comparisons

AWS Batch vs Amazon EC2

Compared 27% of the time

AWS Fargate vs Amazon EC2

Compared 19% of the time

AWS Lambda vs Amazon EC2

Compared 18% of the time

Google App Engine vs Amazon EC2

Compared 11% of the time

Apache Spark vs Amazon EC2

Compared 11% of the time

More Amazon EC2 Competitors

VMware Cloud Foundation vs Google Compute Engine

Compared 32% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Google Compute Engine

Compared 16% of the time

Google Cloud vs Google Compute Engine

Compared 16% of the time

Tencent Cloud vs Google Compute Engine

Compared 15% of the time

More Google Compute Engine Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon EC2

June 2025

Download Amazon EC2 product report

Buyer's Guide

Google Compute Engine

June 2025

Download Google Compute Engine product report

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2

No data available

Overview

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale cloud computing easier for developers.

Amazon EC2’s simple web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon’s proven computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by allowing you to pay only for capacity that you actually use. Amazon EC2 provides developers the tools to build failure resilient applications and isolate them from common failure scenarios.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Google Compute Engine delivers virtual machines running in Google's innovative data centers and worldwide fiber network. Compute Engine's tooling and workflow support enable scaling from single instances to global, load-balanced cloud computing.

Compute Engine's VMs boot quickly, come with persistent disk storage, and deliver consistent performance. Our virtual servers are available in many configurations including predefined sizes or the option to create Custom Machine Types optimized for your specific needs. Flexible pricing and automatic sustained use discounts make Compute Engine the leader in price/performance.

Google

Sample Customers

Netflix, Expedia, TimeInc., Novaris, airbnb, Lamborghini

Allthecooks, BetterCloud, Bluecore, Cosentry, Evite, Ezakus, HTC, Infectious Media, iStreamPlanet, Mendelics, SageMathCloud, Sedex, Treeptik, Wibigoo, Wix, zulily, Zync

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Apache, Zadara and others in Compute Service. Updated: June 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.

We monitor all Compute Service reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.